How to Beat the Computer in Chess

This article presupposes that you are fairly good at chess. You probably know the time-proven initial moves that start your defenses, and free up your fighting men. I will therefore not proffer any tactical suggestions, but focus, instead, on another type of trick to put up your sleeve.

The programs used in Computer Chess can make millions of calculations a second. They also help the processor to play chess with itself for up to 30 moves into the future based on the last move you made. If it sees that it has put itself in an unfavorable situation with a certain move, it will back up and try a different move. It will do this long enough until it sees that its projected move will give it the upper hand now, and for several moves ahead.

Also, computer chess has a storage of around a million ideal games and moves that it can tap into within nano-seconds.

Some people have the gift of seeing many moves into the future. Those are our chess champions of the world. But this article is addressed to those whose minds excel in other things, thus clouding the ability to see chess moves far into the future.

Just as the computer tries certain combinations secretly before making its final move, you can do the same thing. The best way for you to see 30 moves into the future, is to make your best guess, then see what happens. If it results that your move has triggered a situation that results in a disadvantage for you, then you just simply take back those moves until you get to the original set-up where you made that move, then you try another move, one that is designed to counter the trap you saw earlier when you went ahead with the original move. This means you need an electronic chess game that allows you to take back an unlimited number of moves.

You may ask if that is cheating. Well, the computer does it, so why can't you?

This will not only help you to increase your wins against the computer, but it will give you new insight, as you gradually learn what some fatal moves are, and what other advantageous moves can be. Once you've won a game, then print out the moves list. Do this for each game you win. Later, when you play the computer, use the moves on your moves lists. If the computer doesn't respond to a certain move like it did in one of the games you won, then check your other lists to see if the current computer move is there. If not, then you'll have another moves list to print out after you win the game.

I've discovered one thing about the relationship between you and computers: You are creative, and computers aren't. This gives you a special advantage, once you latch onto something about a computer's priorities or behaviors. While playing an older version of chess with a computer, I discovered that the program had not anticipated early attempts to get a pawn to the opponent's first line. I also discovered that it goes berserk when such an action is going to be achieved within just a few more moves.

These days, the programs are a little smarter for such things, but I haven't noticed that computers are as creative as we are, yet. Let's see if we can discover something else about computers and their chess games that be turned against them, for our advantage.

By playing the computer this way, I've been able to cut down my "take-backs." I won one game by taking back only one or two moves, and one game with zero take-backs. That's not bad, considering the computer does it thousands of times before it ever makes a move.

Source information for this article is found in Chess.com/The_Future_of_Chess.